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Saturday, November 15, 2014

India & China still have big problems between them

From the outset it has been clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have
to walk the razor's edge in his interaction with China's paramount leader Xi
Jinping.

That is because, notwithstanding the friendly rhetoric and promises of Chinese
investment, India and China still have big problems between them. The biggest,
as Modi's remarks at the press interaction noted, was the border. Since the
last major flare up in 1986-87, India and China .

That is because, notwithstanding the friendly rhetoric
and promises of Chinese investment, India and China still have big problems
between them. The biggest, as Modi's remarks at the press interaction noted,
was the border. Since the last major flare up in 1986-87, India and China have
created a 'confidence building measures' regime, which has effectively kept
peace there. But, as incidents in the last couple of days reveal, unsettled
borders can never really be quiet borders.

For this reason, Modi, was perhaps the first Indian
leader in recent times to directly speak of the issue, and that, too, before
China's supreme leader. He echoed what Xi himself has been saying, and what he
reiterated — that we should resolve the border at the earliest. Second, while
the CBMs have done a good work, Modi said there was a need to, at least, work
out a commonly accepted alignment of the 4,056-km long Line of Actual Control
that marks the border today. There are some 14 places on the LAC where India
and China's perception of where it lies differs, and this gives rise to the
so-called "transgressions" or "incursions".

According to the 1993 agreement on maintaining peace
and tranquillity on the LAC, the two countries committed themselves to coming
up with a mutually acceptable LAC. But after initial exchanges of maps, the
process ground to a halt because in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure, there were
expectations that the two sides would actually resolve their border dispute
quick time.

Following the appointment of highlevel Special
Representatives in the wake of Vajpayee's 2003 visit to Beijing, things moved
fast and the two sides worked out a basic agreement on the "Political
Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China
Boundary Question "in 2005 which would essentially have the two sides swap
their claims — India's Aksai Chin for China's Arunachal Pradesh.

The 17 rounds of discussions between the Special
Representatives have done the required work, what is now needed is for the
political leaders, which means Xi and Modi, to finalise the settlement. There
are other problems, some that have been spoken about openly, some not and some
only obliquely. Among the ones that have not openly come up is China's
activities in South Asia, especially Pakistan. As long as Beijing seeks to keep
India unsettled in its own region, we cannot really develop ties which could be
called friendly.

Among the ones that
have been obliquely mentioned by Modi is that of transboundary rivers. In the
west the problem relates to the Sutlej and the Indus, and in the east to the
Brahmaputra. The Chinese have agreed to provide India with data related to
river flows, but there is nothing we can do to prevent them from damming or
diverting the flow of the rivers that flow into India.

International law is weak on these issues and the
Chinese say they provide India information on river flows on "humanitarian
grounds" not on the basis of any special right that we have as a lower
riparian.

As a realist, Modi cannot but be unaware of the fact that the Indian public's
expectations of him relate to his ability to deliver on the economic front. In
that scheme of things, China plays a huge role as the engine of the world's
economy. At the same time, that same constituency also expects Modi to best
China in the geopolitical competition with China.

Unfortunately, he cannot do both at the same time,
particularly at this juncture. He needs time to get the economy going, as well
as to reform and restructure the instrumentalities of the state to even think
of competing with China as an equal.